Flag Day is a banner day in Quincy

The city will honor the American flag by holding the 57th annual Quincy Flag Day Parade and Celebration on Saturday.

By Don Conkey

The Patriot Ledger, Quincy, MA

By Don Conkey

Posted Jun. 12, 2008 at 12:01 AM
Updated Jun 12, 2008 at 12:11 PM

By Don Conkey

Posted Jun. 12, 2008 at 12:01 AM
Updated Jun 12, 2008 at 12:11 PM

QUINCY

» Social News

Henry Bradley has met a lot of American servicemen, and says that there is a common thread that runs through all of them. Love for their flag.

“When you’re in the service, we all have pride in our various branches,” said Bradley, who served in the Air Force in the 1960s and is now Quincy’s director of veterans services. “However, all of us come together because of the pride we have in the American flag. There is nothing more powerful for servicemen.”

On Saturday night, Quincy will put its best foot forward to honor the American flag by holding the city’s 57th annual Flag Day parade and celebration. Thousands of people are expected to be on hand for the event.

The parade will step off from Coddington Street, near Quincy High School, at 7 p.m.

“We are the oldest running Flag Day parade in the nation,” said James Conso, program manager for the Quincy Parks Department. “It’s a great celebration – the best patriotic event we have. It glorifies Old Glory.”

The parade will move down Hancock Street before turning onto Merrymount Parkway and ending at the entrance to Pageant Field.

There, the celebration will continue with activities including a raising of a 30-by-60 foot American flag, a fly-over salute by the Air Wing of the State Police, a howitzer salute from the Massachusetts Army National Guard’s 101st Field Artillery Unit and a fireworks display over Black’s Creek. The fireworks are to begin at about 9:15 p.m.

The parade and celebration tend to tug at the heartstrings of people young and old. Attendees can sense what the flag means to all of the other people standing and sitting around them.

“It is so casual and relaxed,” Conso said. “It is almost a reunion of residents – everyone coming out from one end of the city to another. It is not only a patriotic function, it is old friendships revisited.”

For Mayor Thomas Koch, the night promises to be an emotional one.

His father, the late Richard Koch, longtime park director for the city, started the Flag Day event in 1952.

While Thomas Koch has been at many, many Flag Day parades, attending his first one as mayor will be extra-special special “because it is something that was so important to Dad,” he said.

“Dad was a member of ‘the greatest generation,’ a World War II veteran who had a strong respect for the flag,” Koch said.

Koch said his father, who died in 1987, always tried to instill that respect for the flag, not only in his own children but in kids throughout Quincy.

“There will be 2000 kids marching in the parade” – children from many groups and organizations – which is a credit not only to the Quincy of today but to the tradition his father started more than a half-century ago, Koch said.

Page 2 of 2 - Tradition is precious, Bradley said.

“I was raised in the ’40s and ’50s, and your parents put pride in you about your country,” he said. “It seems to be lacking a lot today, unfortunately.